The educational technology trend that I chose to explore this week is blended learning. In essence, blended learning involves in class learning time for students, but also an outside of class, technology enabled learning environment for students. In our district, we have many blended learning class options, such as consumer economics and American Government. Students spend 2-3 days in the classroom and on the other days students are able to use the learning commons or study hall space to complete assignments for their class. Students are guided through modules on Canvas or Google Sites and learn and explore at their own pace. According to Blended Learning Universe, blended learning is a formal education that involves a component online, a component away from home, and involves a learning path that students follow. The same source describes there are seven different models of blended learning that schools can utilize depending on their students’ needs.
This type of learning involves a great deal of self-direction and requires students to be self-starters. Not only do they have their homework that would be required for any class, but they also then complete half, or more, of their class on their own. My question to our class is how do we go about supporting students in this environment if they don’t have these self-initiation skills? Should we just say these students are not able to take classes such as these, or should we be exploring these options as a practice for self-directedness needed in the post-secondary world?
ELearning Industry predicts that by 2019, when our students are in college, over half of college classes will be elearning based. The same source also reports that in 2014 41.7% of Fortune 500 companies use educational technology to instruct their employees during formal learning hours. These two statistics show a need for our students to develop the ability to guide themselves through online learning, but if we don’t allow them to participate due to their executive functioning skills, are we preparing them for the future? We will help to ensure their learning about content by keeping them in a traditional class, but are we doing further damage by doing this?
What a great topic for discussion! As a special education teacher, this is a problem I encounter quite often. It's interesting because some students who aren't self-directed in a traditional environment sometimes find a blended course is a better fit. In fact, many alternative schools or lieu-of-expulsion programs often have some sort of on-line, blended learning as the main source of curriculum. But for other students, even if they aren't getting a full, blown-out blended learning experience, they are getting "tastes" of it through flipped classroom assignments, Canvas assignments, EdPuzzle activities, etc. In all honesty, when I read articles about what the expectations are for 21st century learners in the workplace, I get panicky. The bar is set so high, and I often worry will any of my students truly be ready for what awaits them? Of course, they will because they have to be but that doesn't make it any less daunting.
ReplyDelete